


A Work Of Art

by Anonymous



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art is important to them and it is to me, Descent into crack, I love my silly Thomas, M/M, Miranda Barlow Lives, Oral Sex, Pirate Miranda Barlow, Soft Flint, Writing AU, colour AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:48:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28802325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: People want to believe he painted it for his wife, for she has shiny green eyes, and the greens are too prevalent for him not to see them. It marks you, I am sure you understand, the first time colour bathes you. This would be a beautiful story. But the dates don’t line up. He only met her about two months after he finished the painting, long after he even started working on it. He lived with his assistant, a man who wanted to become an artist himself. It is amazing how far people will go. They bent time, because that was more natural than a man loving another man. They said the artist somehow knew that that woman, who he hadn’t yet met was the one he would love more than himself. I must revel in the irony of you having such an iconic piece here.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton
Kudos: 13
Collections: Black Sails Holiday Exchange 2020





	A Work Of Art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [techieturnover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/techieturnover/gifts).



> This will be a dedicatory to the person I wrote this work to.  
> As a big fan of your work, I have to admit I was scared to see that you were the one I would be writing to, but that was a challenge I was excited to take, because you are an inspiration, a role model and an amazing friend. Without you, without the talks we had, this fic would not exist, I want you to know that. You talk beautifully, you write even better, and you deserve much more than just this fic, but from the other side of the world that is what i can give you for christmas. Enjoy this little fluffy, angsty and smuty piece, I wrote it with love.

1.  
The first time he saw colour it was blue. That soft, clear blue of Thomas’ eyes. When he realized that the warmth in his chest wasn’t shame or insecurity. When he let Thomas hold him, care for him, love him. Such a gorgeous shade of blue.  
The first things they wrote to each other on their arms were snippets of verses they read when they were apart. Voltaire, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, because writings as beautiful as these could not go unshared. “To think is not a sin,” said Voltaire “for we are born free from the rules of God and men, and so we are to stay.” Those writings startled James. He did not remember getting them, but when he recognized whose calligraphy that was, he had to smile to himself like an absolute idiot in that tiny room he rented in London. It was proof and confirmation that Thomas was thinking of him, even from so far away. From that point forward he would pull his sleeves discretely up, even if there were others around, in anticipation, in hope, of another speck of poetry, because how would these people know?  
So when all colours faded to grey after that fatidic visit to Hennessey, what was once so sweet and lovely became the best tool he could have hoped on having.  
“Where are you?” he wrote on the ship with Miranda. “What happened? Are you all right?”  
James waited what seemed to be days before Thomas wrote with shaky letters. If James knew how much worse they would become, he wouldn’t have thought of them in that way.  
“I don’t know. It’s dark, and it’s cold. Where are you?”  
He had to think a lot before answering because he was sure that Thomas would not be the only one reading what he was about to write, but to strategise what he was going to say to a lover was a feeling he wasn’t even going to get used with.  
“With Miranda. We are fine.”  
“James, they will take my ink away. I love you.”  
James breathed in hard, wishing he could say more than  
“I love you too.”  
He kept staring at his forearm, tracing those sloppy letters with his fingers, as if Thomas would feel them, just as he felt his writing itching his skin.  
The colours didn’t fade all at once, or if they did, James couldn’t notice, because the sea and the sky were still blue and that was all he was looking at. Mostly because sadness made his bones too heavy to lift, but also because during those six weeks from London to the Caribbean he had too much spare time, and only one book to read. Miranda would eventually touch his shoulder, trying to get him back, but James made what he could to flee, because each time he looked, her skin was less lively, her clothes duller and he still wanted to believe that everything was as vibrant as that bright blue sky.

2.  
Miranda wouldn’t be able to tell why or when, but James got into the habit of journaling. He thought Thomas would appreciate some news, some glimpse of the world outside of Bethlam, a speck of love, of security and of certainty. He would tell Thomas how his day went, ask about his with no expectation of receiving a reply.  
“We have info about you,” he wrote casually after Miranda found his hospitalization documents. Those papers were like fossils, evidence that someone so dear existed, because he somehow could not believe otherwise. “That’s your name there, you exist. We did not find a death certificate, so I guess that’s a plus.” he dipped the pen in ink. “I hope you are as sick of green as I am of blue. I hope you get to see the world outside. I hope I get to see you again because the only colours I can see are cursed shades of blue. The sky is blue, the sea is blue, some dresses are blue, and if you let stuff rot for long enough, it will become bluish. The veins of white people are blue, they brag about it, and some people’s eyes are blue, but they are not the same shade as yours, they never will be. Why do you have to be everywhere for me, but still be so far away?”  
James would wonder how Thomas’s captors were dealing with his body being covered in ink. If such an insisting lover startled them, or if they were used to the drama and already knew how to deal with him, forcing Thomas to cover himself with baggy clothes, making him shower in the dark. But James knew his Thomas, he knew he would light a candle late at night, just to read his news.

3.  
One morning, about two years after they arrived in Nassau, he woke up early in his ship, and, when he was about to get dressed, he noticed scribbles on his forearm. James had to rub his sleepy eyes to look at that again, and when he realized what that was, he walked to his desk as silently as he could, trying not to wake Miranda up. He stumbled a little to open a window and curled up on the table, holding his arm as if the ink would somehow slip away in his veins if he didn’t hold them tight enough. They settled that the writing would start with the forearm, then move up from there, which was useful when Thomas would write walls of texts detailing a beautiful passage he read, but there were only three words, written with something that wasn’t ink.  
“I’m scared,”  
James froze, his chest got cold, his feet even colder. What happened? What was happening? What was that he was writing with? He got up and searched in his belongings for a quill, and when he began writing, he put on too much pressure and too little ink.  
“Miranda and I are investigating your whereabouts.”  
But then he remembered that Thomas wasn’t ever going to be alone with his own body, so he crossed that. Some blood came out, but James would only notice it after he put his clothes on.  
“We are coming, you are not alone. She loves you, we love you.” then he turned his forearm a little, to write in a more sheltered spot. “I love you,”.  
After that, he just sat on the floor, staring out of the window at that cursed blue sky. When the bells rang at exactly six o’clock, Miranda woke up in the other bed they had put in the captain’s quarters. She looked at that rag of a man with sleepy eyes, wondering what must have happened, and sustained his gaze when he looked back at her. As if nothing was happening, James got up and changed his shirt, his pants, making his best to keep on ignoring Miranda.  
“Care to say what that was all about?”  
He shook his head as he was fastening his belt, not having enough courage to turn around and face her.  
“A nightmare, that is all.”  
Miranda had to make herself satisfied with that.  
Because they had prizes to conquer, reputations to hold, and wages to pay. Because she had much work to do, analysing clues and documents, managing all the informants she had put on more places she could count, and, even if Thomas was always in memory, the idea of him became the bone that healed around an unremoved bullet. Painful, unchangeable, constant. That day, when James’s sleeve fell as he was holding onto the ropes to stabilize himself, Miranda saw the writings on his forearm, and she couldn’t look at him the same way for weeks. It was as if James was unwilling to realize that she too was grieving, that she too missed him, because he was so lost he couldn’t look anywhere else but forward. That was how he was, she knew that already, but she couldn’t help but think that he was being selfish and self-centred by not even asking if she wanted to say something, to talk to Thomas and ask how he was.  
Or maybe she was just overreacting, and he had just had a bad dream, and wrote Thomas.  
That was an excuse. She knew him well enough to spot a lie.  
“I know ur coming.” that was again not ink. “Too much time passed. Were we real? They tell me ‘no’. I know they lie”  
James felt his heart breaking when he pulled up his sleeve in the galley because he remembered an envious handwriting, beautiful grammar, and poetic sentence construction.  
He looked at Miranda, who was eating in front of him, and she looked back, annoyed.  
“That wasn’t a nightmare,” James said.  
“Yeah, no shit.”  
He found it strange to hear her curse.  
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell you what happened at that moment, but... Thomas wrote to me, and I am...”  
She touched his hand. It was strange for him to feel how much her skin had changed, how much curlier her hair became with the salty air. Her fingers got calloused after holding on ropes for so long, her cheeks and shoulders tanned. She would be with him on the ship, plundering with him, negotiating when the prices weren’t good enough, so when she turned his arm to see what Thomas said, James had to let her.  
“Finish eating. I have to sort some things out, so I’ll leave you alone with him. Let me talk to him when you finish.” she thought for a second, still looking at James’ forearm, shaking her head before continuing. “I have informants looking for him, but, God, if that was enough.”  
James read the first line. “I’m scared”. How could he not be? How could they not be?  
He couldn’t eat any more, so he gave her his unfinished meal, in case she would want more, and left for his quarters. He hesitated before lifting his sleeve, for what seemed like the first time. James would circumnavigate the earth to prove Thomas wrong, but then he realized he would tell that to Thomas, not to himself. His Thomas didn’t talk like that, his Thomas didn’t doubt like that. His Thomas, the Thomas that made him deconstruct his entire world, couldn’t be second guessing. He spoke so well; he defended his ideas so well that he would surely know that they were manipulating him. His Thomas would never be so weak.  
Weak.  
James realized he too was weak. He too committed unspeakable things because his plan A didn’t work, he fled, he  
He lied to Miranda.  
So either Thomas and he were mad, or neither. James couldn’t tell which case it was.  
“We were.” he wrote after contemplating for what seemed like aeons. “You surely remember that time I kicked your father out of his own house.”  
“Am I going mad?”  
He had to rub his eyes before answering because his view was losing focus. It was getting blurred.  
“No.”  
Thomas didn’t seem to trust him, because he kept on asking James the same question, over and over and over. Soon his arms became filled with “Am I going mad”. Then his chest, his legs.  
He sat, powerless, and suppressed the urge to scream. What were they doing to his Thomas?  
The questions kept coming, he could not answer them.  
James got up and walked around the room. Something was happening, something bad, and he was an ocean away. He could only watch as new letters were drawn on his body, and he held them, talking, even if he knew it was useless.  
“You are not, Thomas, you are not.”  
It took him some time before he could get his pen.  
“Thomas Hamilton, listen to me!” James underlined that many times. “You are not. They are lying.”  
“You don’t know that. I don’t know that.”  
“I’m here with you.” James thought saying that would make difference. “I’ll stay here. Just, please, hold on. Please, you are not mad, you are the men I love, stop, stop!”  
Thomas didn’t stop.  
Letters became lines, lines became smudges, and they kept on coming. James called, but to no avail.  
When Miranda got into the room, she saw James crying for the first time in her life.  
She sat on the floor with him, and hugged him, as he showed her what Thomas was doing. The lines, the questions.  
“What do I do?” he asked her. “I need to do something, tell me what! Miranda, please!”  
She held his head against her shoulders, not allowing him to look.  
That was all there was to do  
October 16th 1706.  
Thomas went silent. James knew, because he kept on waiting, until the letters washed away from his skin from day to night, as if they had been cleaned from both their bodies. The one thing he couldn’t take off his mind was: dying people knew when they were going to die. They saw death coming as a serene realization after illness, he had seen enough of his crew mates sick to know that, so to read that “I’m scared” as a goodbye made too much sense for him to be comfortable with.  
Months later, Miranda approached him.  
He wished she hadn’t.

4.  
He and Miranda had informants scouring every ship for the surname Hamilton. They sometimes received info, but never about that Hamilton they were looking for.

5.  
One day she entered the room to see him writing, covering his arm with confessions, conversations he had to have alone. From his shoulder to his wrist, his tights, his belly, his chest. “I can still see blue, he is not gone, I know that” he told her once “and he needs to know I’m here.” Miranda found it hard to believe.  
“You sure are keeping him busy.” She said, knowing fully well what she was interrupting when she sat next to him.  
She saw him trying to see colour in her. He inspected her cheeks for any hint of pink, her hair for any brown, but there was only black, white, grey, and blue. His eyes laid expressionless on her face, because even if he knew he could not expect anything better, his blindness was still disappointing. She closed his eyes with her thumbs and stroked his lids. James relaxed in her touch, gladly staying still.  
“You have the most lovely shade of red on your hair, on your beard, on your freckles, and your eyes are softly green.”  
James held her hands in place. A peg leg. Those descriptions were nothing but prosthetics, to help him heal from a phantom pain.  
“Tell me about the city,” he asked with his eyes still closed.  
Miranda smiled and took the pen out of his hands. She asked for his right arm, the single visible spot where he could not write on, which he gladly gave.  
“The city,” she started, “has yellow walls, yellow ground and yellow fruit, that grow from green palm threes.” painting him with her beautiful handwriting. There was something calming about seeing other people’s calligraphy, noticing how they closed their as and os, how they cut their ts. “The children have rosy cheeks, the rich wear red, the poor, beige, and for him... I’m sure you already told him how everything seems blue.”  
James smiled.  
“Trees are green, the grass is green”  
“I bet that disgusting sludge in the kitchen must be green too.”  
Laughs, because there was nothing left but laughter. Even when he was laughing, his soul felt heavy and when he looked at her, he could see Miranda hiding something.  
“The sea should also be greenish.” Miranda left the quill over the table and looked at him seriously. “And you will see how plants here are much greener than in London.”  
The smile fades. I’m scared I’m going mad. He could not settle with that goodbye and she was there, reminding him.  
“How come you say that?”  
“It’s not that bad! It’s good news, listen. I came to tell you,” she looked at him with that soft expression of hers. “That our informants intercepted some of Peter Ash’s letters, with Alfred Hamilton. We were... betrayed.”  
“How is that good news? It does shit!” he interrupted, feeling his arms tense in anger.  
“It does much! They discharged Thomas from Bethlam and he is now on his way to Georgia.” she saw confusion and hope grow in his eyes, and she didn’t know how to deal with him. “He is alive.”  
James couldn’t smile. He didn’t know why. He blamed himself for it.  
“How the fuck?” James asked in shock, staring at Miranda as if her face could hide information he did not yet hear, but she handed him the letters. That was true. “How is he doing? Who is he with? How”  
“Before you get lost, Ashe has the ship’s schedule, and going from what we know, we have little time.”  
James rubbed his hands on his hair, thinking so much, so hard, it was almost painful to watch. They were stocking up for pursuit, going after a prize they had worked hard to hype. There was no way on earth they could convince their crew to abandon that for what were... personal matters. Both of them knew how easy it was to anger those men, and how revengeful some could be. But he couldn’t leave Thomas because of those men, he had to find a way, he had to  
“James,” Miranda called him when she saw him getting lost in thought. “First things first, right?”  
“How will we go to Charles Town?”  
“I have a plan, and we have to talk to Eleanor. Get dressed, I’ll prepare a longboat.”  
“The men”  
“What part of ‘I have a plan, James’ didn’t you understand?”  
He sighed hard. She just spent so long writing poetry on him, she had no right to hurry him that way.  
She wasn’t in a hurry; she was excited, hopeful, and she knew what would happen if he got lost in all the implications Thomas’s survival brought.  
While he was tucking his shirt in his pants, James looked out of the window, to the blue sea, blue sky. He fastened his belt and remembered a quote from Milton he wrote on his calf some days ago, “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” and found it ironically fitting. Thomas loved that book, Paradise Lost. To think they could soon reread it together... because he knew they would, he had to know, because after October 16th 1706, he had been waiting in fear for blue to finally fade.  
But when James tried to picture the scene, he realized time blurred his memory.  
“You came quickly,” Miranda said as he hopped on the dinghy with her and Gates.  
James sat quietly, trying to remember.  
How skewed were his eyes? How long were his bangs? James remembered how Thomas used to look at him, but those eyes were floating in a shapeless, undefined, face. He remembered how they used to kiss. When it was calm, Thomas would hold his nape, when it was needy, Thomas would hold his waist. He used to heave in his sleep, not snore. He used to fidget with the corner of the page he was reading. He took his time when eating. He had to put both socks on before putting on his shoes.  
That was perhaps the single most annoying thing he did. The fabric would get dirty, it was sock shoe, shock shoe.  
James realized his shoulders were tense, so he relaxed them.  
“Don’t worry, cap.” Gates said to Flint when their eyes met. “Our crew will be in excellent hands.”  
Thomas liked it when James played with his hair while reading. But how did his voice sound? How did he look like? James could still feel how he used to touch him, but he couldn’t see his face.  
“I’m sure it will.” He answered.  
Gates didn’t ask why they had to leave, nor where they were going when Miranda explained to him her plan. For that James would be forever grateful. Thankful for that and for how fiercely he defended his Captains’ interest.  
“They aren’t asking for more than a boat,” he said after Miss Guthrie disagreed. “And I confirmed they will give me the captaincy of the Walrus in their absence, plus what we will be doing.”  
“This isn’t a rent house.” She said impatiently. “I don’t give favours, not for him, not for any other captain.”  
“We will pay, this won’t be a favour,” Miranda said.  
“It is not a matter of payment.”  
“You worry that we are pirating goods from you...?” She asked when the realization came, laughing at the sheer stupidity of that concern. “First, we wouldn’t come here asking for a ship, we would tell you about a small prize we could afford to peruse. We would take the ship, then either I or Flint would sail it to its final buyer and give you little to avoid suspicion. You know that’d be much more dangerous and much less profitable.”  
“What she meant to say,” Gates had to interrupt her before she said anything regrettable. “is that we can only work if we do it together. No lies, no scams”  
“No secrets?”  
“Those are private matters, not secrets. They are different things.” James said, feeling his blood boil. Private matters always seemed to be private, until they became scandalous, requiring justification, intervention, help, cure. Privacy existed for everyone else but him.  
“Well, Captain Flint, for me to rent you a ship I would need much more than such a vague description.”  
He felt stupid having to ask a toddler for permission on matters he knew she didn’t understand. She was too young to have sacrificed as much for another as he did. She couldn’t know how it felt to lose so much, but he knew he could not go against her and that felt suffocating.  
“If you don’t,” James started, knowing full well he would regret speaking. “We will become a bigger concern to you.”  
If she denied him, he would row a longboat all the way to Charles Town. That was out of the question.  
“You know we are pursuing the Laurestinus, they need agility.” Gates completed their thoughts because he saw his captains containing themselves and he wouldn’t allow their plan to fail.  
Eleanor sighed and took a heavy book from the side of her table.  
“What I can do is offer both of you a spot on the Hurworth. They are laving today for Charles Town.”  
“That will have to do.” Gates said, feeling his body relax. “Thank you so much, miss Guthrie. I’m glad we reached an agreeable deal.”  
“When is the departure?” James asked impatiently.  
“At 13 o’clock. I will allow each of you personal luggage, only that.”  
They thanked her and left with a permit.  
Scandalized, defiled, cured. These thoughts came back stronger than he would ever be comfortable with. Was that all they were going to be? A mystery others needed to solve, a problem they had to shun, a sickness they had to cure?  
“That went well.” the quartermaster stated proudly.  
James knew what happened in those madhouses. There was a reason they had to be far from the city.  
“Thank you.” Miranda looked at him, calmer than she was ten minutes ago.  
They didn’t see it fit to pack anything. It was already at 11 o’clock.  
It felt wrong to board a foreign ship, without rights to captaincy, not as a prisoner. Simple and humble guests, like barnacles are to whales. Miranda noticed how agitated her companion was, and she knew it wasn’t out of excitement. When the ship sailed, he leaned on the balustrade, gazing at the blues. That sight brought her back to times when he refused to eat, and when he spent his days looking out of windows, avoiding her and everyone else at all costs. When she approached him from the side, he looked at her and smiled.  
“You spoke well,” he said. “Better than I could have spoken.”  
“Did you see how she looked at me? It has been long since I saw someone so done.”  
“I did.”  
She held his hand, and he held hers back.  
“I realized I have a shitty memory.” James resumed. “I can’t remember his face.”  
“You are protecting yourself. I forgot Alfred’s face too, even if can picture exactly how he looked when we killed him.”  
He held her hand tighter, feeling less alone. The look. Every look was unforgettable.  
“I sincerely hope you don’t love Alfred.”  
“I don’t, ugh, gross.” She laughed and leaned her head on his shoulder. “We can’t always speak well.”  
“No.” James touched her forehead with his cheek. “We can’t.”  
There they stayed until the blues became black.  
They ate and slept, trying not to think.  
But James could only worry. If he couldn’t see Thomas’ face in his memory, would he recognize the men when he saw him? He closed his eyes, once again trying to sleep, and picturing, summoning, constructing, desperately calling for his face.  
The writings on his skin faded because he had no ink to replace them with fresh stories. Miranda saw him become quiet, quieter than he usually was. James saw her become more distant, further from him every time they spoke. Which wasn’t much, they couldn’t have any news. He wanted to reach out to hear, grab her sleeves, and listen to whatever she wanted to say, be it complaints about the food, old tales she wanted to share. She wanted him to talk.  
Because he could not allow himself to think. The implications of Thomas being alive, the hope he had lost so long ago. That would hurt too much, and he had to function.

6.  
Seven days.  
It took them seven days.  
Charles Town was grey. Not that he could see if it was colourful, but he learned to infer which shades of grey were shadows of which colour. That city was just plain.  
“We will need better clothes,” Miranda said as she looked around. “We are standing out too much.”  
James looked at himself, then at her.  
“I think we are fine...”  
“You can’t be this tone-deaf.”  
“We are in Charles Town.”  
“James...”  
“Just go for it, Miranda.” He started walking in front of her. “Confidence is key, act like they are the ones in the wrong.”  
She had to follow him.  
“We are Mister and Miss Barlow, we came to see the Governor Peter Ashe,” he said after knocking on the governor’s home. “We are sugar merchants, from the colonies. He isn’t expecting us.”  
The servant eyed them, head to toe, unconvinced.  
“Will you be kind enough to brew us some tea?” When he walked into the house, the poor boy had no choice but to give way. “It has been long since my wife and I had been anywhere civilized.”  
“Right away, sir. What should I tell him you are here for?”  
“Discussion of prices.” James smiled politely. “We are looking for a better arrangement.”  
When he left, Miranda looked around the house. Colourful papers dressed the walls, vibrant. Ashe had carefully put imported porcelain on display. Her eyes met James’ and she could see he noticed it too, and he was fuming. The cup she received had delicate paintings of floral patterns, the tea was so strong it was red.  
It was truly a lovely room for those who could see it.  
“Oh my! James, Miranda!” Ashe said, entering the guest room. He asked the servant to close the door behind him. “It is so good to see you, old friends.”  
Miranda had to smile in complete desperation. She would not slit his throat, it would completely ruin the carpet.  
“Yes!” she said, still confident and immovable. “Yes, it has been long.”  
“Bring me up to date on the news.” Peter took a seat, asking them to do the same. “How have you been doing?”  
Just give us the schedule, she asked Ashe, as if he could read her thoughts, you can pull up another lie, you will face no consequences.  
“We have been getting by.” James’ polite smiled had faded by now. “And it is painfully obvious that you have no idea how.”  
Peter served himself some tea and picked a biscuit from the plate.  
“It pains me to see you struggling.” He looked at them and smiled. “I was told you became sugar merchants, I can find deals for you, better deals.”  
“The schedule, Peter,” Miranda said, eyeing him back blankly. To manufacture any expression required energy she didn’t have. She was too tired, too tired to lie, to hide motives. “We didn’t come here for the money.”  
“What schedule?” it was truly enraging, James thought, how that scum could fake being worried so well. Peter curled his eyebrows in doubt and looked at them as if sincerely asking for an answer. “I can provide some regular ships’ plans if you want the upper hand in commerce.”  
Ashe’s acting robbed them of words. Miranda knew that her informants were right, nobody would talk like Peter was talking if they had nothing to hide.  
“Thomas’ schedule, Peter.”  
The lord laid his tea back on the centre table, uncrossing his legs and bending his body forward. He put his elbows over his knees and stared back at them, at both of them, more serious now than ever.  
“Thomas is dead.”  
James shook his head and began unbuttoning his sleeve. A silent process. He folded them up, one after the other, revealing the fading weeks of writing he still had. Peter looked at them as if that revelation was obscene. Those conversations should never have happened, that was just  
wrong.  
“No, Peter, I can say it better than you. He is not dead.” James said, sitting just like Peter was sitting, staring at him just like Peter was staring. His gaze piercing through his eyes, looking into his soul. “We can start with an offer of one thousand dollars and a discussion of an alibi. But don’t think for a second that you have any choice.”  
“James, Miranda, Thomas died on”  
“On October 16th, 1707, about two years ago, I remember.” James smirked, but that memory was still excruciating. A letter from Alfred Hamilton to the London’s registry, dry and blunt ‘Our son is dead, write that down’. “Want more dates? I have them all. January thirtieth, 1705, I get assigned to be an Advisor at the Hamilton household. May seventh, 1705, Thomas proposes the universal pardons for Nassau. We keep talking till late night, it’s the first time we see colour” he smiles, thinking for a second he is alone again”. November tenth, 1705,” he resumes. “the idea goes public. November twenty-first 1705, we have to leave London. June first, 1708 will be the day Peter Ashe gets his throat slit by refusing to cooperate.”  
“I’m not cooperating? The single reason you still don’t have a bullet between your eyes is that you are friends.”  
“Friends?” Miranda laughs. “As a friend, I must say, you have an amazing taste for decor, but everything seems so earthy... didn’t your wife have green eyes? I can’t help but wonder what would you do if we took them from you, robbed them, just like you robbed from us. Would you still live in such a vibrant home?”  
“You are delusional.” he wasn’t looking at them as enemies, but as dear friends, struck by an invisible illness. “And I can understand why you would believe in his survival, he was beloved by all of us, so I am here, to help you move on, but that will be impossible if you don’t trust me.”  
James inhaled and swallowed the sudden thirst for blood that hit him. The captain shook his head and got up to look around. Miranda prepared herself on the sofa, knowing his strategy. Peter analysed his friend, finding it eerie how he could still walk like a gentleman, how he could pretend to care about art and decoration while committing such barbarous crimes against the civilized world. He checked James’ belt for any guns, his boots for any knives, knowing he wouldn’t find any.  
James stopped before the central painting of the room, a lonely man staring at lush green woods. He wouldn’t be able to tell what that was if he didn’t know the painting, it was all grey.  
“I read some critiques about this artist, you know? Everyone wants to believe he painted it for his wife, for she has shiny green eyes, and the greens,“ James traced the forest without touching the artwork ” are too prevalent for him not to see them. It marks you, I am sure you understand, the first time colour bathes you. This would be a beautiful story.” He had to laugh. “But the dates don’t line up. He only met her about two months after he finished the painting, long after he even started working on it. He lived with his assistant, a man who wanted to become an artist himself. It is amazing how far people will go. They bent time, because that was more natural than a man loving another man. They said the artist somehow knew that that woman, who he hadn’t yet met,” he felt his voice crack, hadn’t yet met. “was the one he would love more than himself. I must revel in the irony of you having such an iconic piece here.”  
“Iconic? Iconic to who?” Peter asked, his face painted red with shame. How could James talk so naturally about a topic so obscene? He didn’t want to listen, he would dispose of that work as soon as he could.  
“To me, to us.” whoever ‘us’ meant.  
With that, he looked to Miranda, signalling that he had distracted Ashe enough for her to move.  
She stood up and walked across the centre table, as friendly as she could, then covered his mouth with a cloth, took a knife, concealed by her long skirt, and pressed it against his neck.  
“If you scream, James and I will die, but so will you.” she said, still soft, calm and elegant.  
He looked at his friend, asking him to be sensible, but his face didn’t flinch.  
“We advise you to choose wisely, because we will fight.” James continued, as if they were both the same person speaking. “Since we arrived at this situation, I will assume you are unwilling to sell. You will tell us where the schedule is, or we will keep looking for it, for as long as it takes.”  
Miranda lifted the cloth, and Peter remained silent.  
“I’ll show you.” He said at least. “Don’t touch me, I’ll show you.”  
Miranda allowed him to stand up and James watched, with a hand on his belt, as Ashe made his way to his bureau. He followed Peter to the drawers behind the desk, apprehensive while the man struggled with the keys. Miranda walked to the table, placing her hands on the opposite side of Peter’s desk and demanding with her presence that he worked faster.  
The governor only did it when he opened the top drawer and took a prepared gun. He didn’t hesitate when aiming for Miranda and pulling the trigger.  
But when Peter pulled it, James forced his arms to the side.  
The pristine carpet was, at the end, shot, but remained blood free.  
Until James squished Ashe’s arms tight and threw him at the floor, feeling rage take him over like it hadn’t in a long time.  
They didn’t need to talk for Miranda to know she should secure the entrance, which she did, standing beside the door, ready to drag and shoot whoever tried to enter. James threw her the pistol he always kept hidden in his coat, with the other hand immobilizing Peter. He tried to scream, but before he could, James kicked his face and knelt above him.  
“I swear to God,” the governor hissed, with his face pressed against the floor.  
He didn’t have time to finish.  
James punched his face, while he remembered the many pleasant evenings they had together.  
He remembered them, he remembered how friendly Peter seemed to be.  
Was he truly delusional? Were his eyes too obfuscated by grief for him to see the obvious truth: Thomas died on the 16th of October, 1706, while James watched, calling, screaming, from one Atlantic away?  
Peter’s groans brought him back to reality. James gagged him with a wet cloth, making it difficult for Ashe to breathe, and tied his hands behind his back so tight his fingers became purple. The governor was still trying, fighting, just like a fish thrown on deck. The captain could then carry on his silent task, searching trough Ashe’s papers with his blood smeared hands. He opened the remaining drawers, looking for Bethlam’s seal, for Alfred’s signature, knowing that any letters from him would be at least a year old. He took them. All of them. It felt personal. Still, Peter looked strangely calm.  
James shook his head and walked around the room, searching for more hidden spots. They heard steps, but James knew he had to stay calm. He could miss the papers if he became too tense. He checked the books on the shelf behind the bureau, searched for hidden storages under the table.  
“They must have paid you a shit ton of money.” He mumbled, feeling his arms tense with every wrong letter he checked. “Miranda, please, I need some help here.”  
She put the pistol away in her belt and, as she was walking behind the desk, she kicked the bunch of keys that Peter dropped when he took the gun. Miranda took them and, with her heel, started testing the floor planks, until one was hollow and unstable.  
“Knife, please.”  
She didn’t need to ask.  
There, under the floor, was a safe painted in deep green with golden details. She tried the keys until one of them worked and took the tiny bunch of letters in there. Peter became tense, and that insufferable smile faded from his face. Miranda checked the seals, Bethlam, Hamilton, Ashe.  
“Thank you very much, mister governor.” She smiled while putting the planks back in place. “We are so sorry for the nuisance.”  
They then looked out of the window, evaluating if that was a viable escape route. But James touched her shoulder and shook his head.  
“Listen, this might not work, but, for now, it will raise much less suspicion. Just follow me.”  
He cleaned the blood on his fists on the inside of his coat and opened the guest room’s door minimally for them to fit. The servant stared at them, and they stared back at the servant. Staring. Until James found the right words. “The Governor asked to be excused from any and all disturbances.” He stated, as naturally as he could. Long and complicated words confused, and he needed that boy confused. “He told us he will go trough an enormous amount of paperwork and needs a focused working environment.”  
“I heard a loud noise, not a minute ago.”  
“He let a book of his fall. Cary on with your labour, young one, if the governor finds himself in need of you assistance, he will promptly request it. Now, leave.” the boy stood still for a second, trying to processes, but then he realized he couldn’t so he took his distance, confused and resigned.  
hat was the tensest walk to the front door, and Miranda couldn’t believe that after a knife to the throat, a gunshot and quite a lot of beating, they were walking, unnoticed and innocent. When they left, they set their held breath free and couldn’t help but smile. To themselves, to each other, to the future that was closer by the second. They talked about their luck until their blood stopped pumping fast and they were calm enough to search for a corner. Miranda found a spot in an alley between two shops and she sat on the upper crate, crossing her legs. James soon followed her, docking his butt on the lower crate. She handed all the letters to him, but James held them between his fingers for what felt like years. They were heavy, menacing.  
“Help me go trough them.” He asked, giving her some of them back. “I’ll return there and kill him if I have to do it alone.”  
Miranda lifted her eyes from the letters and worried, asking herself if she should say anything, as he handed her half of the bunch. She saw James open one with hesitant fingers and noticed how long it took from him to lower his gaze from the wall he was violently staring. He started reading, getting to know every detail, and watching, as a spectator watches from so far away, his own demise. The first ones, still from London, were the absolute worst. They made Peter’s intentions painfully clear and gave sense to his actions. That was why he wanted to keep Thomas and James talking, that was why he seemed so friendly, that was why he was asking for so many personal details. For such... superfluous benefits. For fear. Fear from Alfred, from the parliament. James knew most people weren’t as brave as his Thomas, but to be a coward as Peter...? He had to update his definitions of courage, he learned to expect much less.  
“James,” Miranda called softly as she saw her man plotting yet another crime. His mouth was shut tight, his teeth clenched hard “It is unimportant now, we need the schedule.” He blinked heavily. His hands were stiff with the will to tear all that paper.  
“I know, I know.”  
Even if he knew that most of the letters were of no interest, he read all of them, and those he could not, he had to ask Miranda what they said. That was torture, James knew that. It was useless to power through the pain of knowing the full extent of Peter’s betrayal, to know how every word he said was fake.  
“Thomas Hamilton, first son of Alfred Hamilton, was hospitalized in Bethlam’s mental facilities on December thirtieth 1705 under the diagnosis of madness.”  
He could only blame himself for not noticing the obvious signs of dishonesty, for thrusting someone as degenerated as Peter, because Thomas taught him how to thrust, because, after him, James could believe there was something good to see and feel on all people. So he kept reading, one after the other, until that one came.  
The schedule felt heavy on his hands. “Thomas Hamilton is to be picked at the Charles Town city harbour’s most concealed dock at 6 o’clock in the evening of June second, 1708, from the Undine, whose banner is attached to the brief. The agents who are to pick him up, assigned by the late Alfred Hamilton, are to arrive an hour prior to be checked.”  
He felt  
like a character in a novel.  
Thomas’s name kept echoing in his mind, his incomplete face, his distorted voice. The memory of his touch, more a feeling than a recollection.  
“Miranda,” He called her, distrustful. “Is this it?”  
She took the paper out of his hands, sharing his doubt until she checked the seals, the signatures, the paper and the stamps. “It is.”  
James sighed and let his body relax against the dirty wall. They weren’t late; they weren’t far. They could do something and after almost three years, after what Thomas wrote him, he had lost hope. ‘I am scared I going mad’, in something that wasn’t ink.  
“You should wash.” Miranda said. “They said they’d check the agents. The same markings on your skin and on his are the first thing they will see.”  
“I will, soon.” James got up and offered her his hand. The night was chilly, and the streets were dangerous. It would be unwise to risk spending it outside. They followed crowds of workers and sailors to the outskirts of town, knowing it would be hard for the city’s police to recognize them, but they choose not to rely on luck. With some coin they had brought with them, they rented a small inn room, and then paid some more for a shower. Their dirty clothes smelled.  
While Miranda slept, James spent the night rubbing the ink out of his skin, mourning as he saw the entries he wrote with so much love get washed away, and trying to process that they were really going to meet. Thomas would smile if he saw their clothes hanging on a makeshift line to dry in such a shabby inn, and would then quote some random author on simplicity and humbleness. Thomas would keep him half awake the entire night, monologuing a debate in which he planned to include James, but in which James was too tired to join. He preferred to lie on Thomas’s chest, listening to him talk until he would inevitably fall asleep. But with the promise of an approaching encounter, James also had to come to terms with knowing that the Thomas he was about to intercept in the harbour was not the same Thomas he got separated from in London. Knowing that he himself was not the same James made the nativity of his hope clear. Mental Hospitals were worse than prisons. He had researched enough about them after he knew Thomas had been enrolled in Bethlam to know that few came back fully.  
Ice showers during winter...  
He remembered the first time he fell into freezing cold water. It was on a mission to the northern Kingdoms, a month after Christmas. He had to approach an abandoned ship, left drifting for a month. He was careless when he walked to the other deck and slipped on the ice that formed over the balustrade. When he hit the water back first, he was sure that that was how he was going to die. His members became stiff and the points of his fingers, his nose, soon became too numb for him to feel. His crew pulled him out with a rope after what felt like hours, but he remembered not being able to hold that rope, because his fingers wouldn’t bend, wouldn’t gripe.  
James had to wonder if he could hold his lover trough memories he himself was still struggling with, and trough many more. It scared him he wasn’t ever going to know the full extent of the damage Thomas went trough. It scared him he would probably flee from Thomas, as he fled from Miranda, at the slightest hint of a suffering too overwhelming for him to help. And it terrified him to know it was possible that no matter how strong he would hug that man, he would just see they had taken his Thomas away from him in an even more irreparable way. He needed to see if he could be as brave as he pictured Thomas to be.  
When he felt he had cleaned his skin enough, he sat on the same bed as Miranda. He looked at his arms, the barest they had been in years. Even if he had a mattress lying on the floor just for him, he slept with her. His side of the room felt terribly lonely.

6.  
“I will see if you get yourself into trouble, and when I know that everything is fine, I’ll go back to the inn and find ourselves a way back.” she said after they ate lunch. As the sun got a bit further down, every minute that passed made him more anxious, more nervous, little by little. James kept bouncing his leg as they ate in the canteen and his mind bounced to the rhythm. He could form no coherent thoughts, just rejoice in the happiness he knew was to come, the one he expected was to come. That was to come, he was not delusional, that was to come.  
And that kept echoing.  
“What do I say when I see him?”  
Miranda shook her head, walking with him to the harbour. Nothing and everything were the only sensible answers. Nothing, because words would never be enough to translate every thought that came to mind, and everything, because Thomas needed to know these thoughts, anyway. When she looked at James, he was trying to hide his flushed cheeks and he kept spinning the rings on his hands, popping his knuckles, feeling the sharp knife he put on his belt.  
“No, don’t answer.” he rubbed his eyes and kept looking forward. Determined and unstoppable, but somehow more unsure than Miranda had ever seen him. “I shouldn’t have asked you that, I’m sorry.” He couldn’t do it. Every step he took became harder, heavier, every breath he took shorter, and every man he looked more menacing, as if everybody knew what he was doing, why he was doing. They would botch his plan, and he could not fight against them. He would be too weak to fight, like he was weak in London.  
“You will go alone now, this is my advantage point.” Miranda distanced herself from him with her hands holding each other over her lap. “You will know what to do.”  
“Yes, I look around, oblivious, and I wave in your direction.”  
“No, not that.” She tidied his coat and smiled. “You will know what to do.”  
Miranda tenderly held his hand as she left for the city’s trading stock, a two story building with a strategic view of the harbour.  
So James walked alone, now searching for that Alfred’s agent. They would be stealthy, all that mission depended on stealth, they would dress plainly as possible, as discrete as possible. To single them out in the port’s movement would be a fruitless endeavour and James had a better plan. He knew the layout of the docs, and he had an educated guess on which one Alfred was talking about when he said most concealed. That didn’t mean the one furthest from every other else. He meant the most private, the less busy, and, by extent, the shallowest. He checked the time by lifting his palm to the horizon and counting how many fingers there were between the sun and the sea, each finger meaning one quarter of an hour. Knowing the sun would set at around 19´clock and having eight fingers up, James knew that he was precisely on time.  
He hid himself behind some wooden crates and waited as a well-dressed man walked dangerously close to him and checked his pocket watch, impatient.  
“Are you Mr. Mather?” a bodiless voice asked.  
“Yes, sir, that’d be me.”  
James heard another pair of footsteps approaching and he held his breath, listening to the heartbeats of both men. If he failed because his poorly cared ears couldn’t hear a passcode, he would commit murder out of pure rage. He heard them flipping trough paper, copies of the documents he had stolen, and heard the waves crashing against rotting wood. Stale seawater had the worst smell he had the displeasure of feeling.  
“Present this to the Undine’s official, he will put the men under your custody.”  
Mr Mather nodded and watched as the other man left. Since he knew he would still have to wait an hour before the ship’s arrival, he sat at the crate James was hiding behind and sighed. The captain drew the knife from its pouch and prepared to attack. He crouched, as to give his legs the best extending power, then jumped, covering the man’s mouth with his hand, pressing the blade against his neck, and pulling him behind the crates.  
“I don’t want to kill you, but if I need to, I will, so stop struggling.” James whispered to his ear, feeling a strange sense of calm and control take over his body. The man relaxed, but kept breathing hard. “Good, good, you see? Not that hard.” He reached in his pouch for a strong smelling glass bottle and removed its cork with his teeth. “Drink.”  
The man, knowing he had no choice, because nobody would listen if he screamed, swallowed that alcohol tasting liquid. Mather knew that if that man wanted to kill him, he would have used the knife, so he felt his muscles relaxing, his eyelids getting heavy, and knew that was because of the drug. James made him stand and conducted him by the arm to a place where he could tie, strip and search him.  
He emptied the agent’s pockets, took his clothes, and fastened a knot to secure the men while he worked. Then James adjusted that new skin to his body, calmer, more controlled.  
He went to the dock and waited. He metabolized sugar, breathed, looked at that awful grey sunset and kept bouncing his leg, feeling how heavy that insignia weighted on his thighs, so hot it was almost uncomfortable. Every single ship he sensed approaching sent chills down his spine and made his stomach turn. He would relearn how Thomas’s face looked like, he would see again, he would hold again, he would love again. So waiting, postured and calm, as the Undine docked, felt like the longest ten minutes of his life, and even if his heart eventually got calmer, when he saw a longboat approaching he felt his blood drop to the tip of his toes and he thought seriously of running back to safety.  
He wasn’t ready.  
A human being could never be ready for that.  
He saw his beloved ungracefully step out of water and be dragged to him by an imposing man, that was ironically shorter than him. James could feel his feet walking there to help Thomas get up, because he knew it was hard, and to free him from those indelicate and rude holds, but he forced his legs to stand still. He couldn’t get into trouble, not now when he was seconds away from freedom. James watched as Thomas approached him, daring to look up, even if the official had told him to keep his dead low, and when he realized he was being stared at, like he was stared when he got hospitalized in Bethlam, he stared back with the best menacing expression he could muster, and soon lost his breath. Those were the green eyes he dreamt of, that was that ginger hair he used to braid, and that was the absolute mess of a man he loved so much. He was a madman. He could smile, so smile he did, and James... stood still in complete wonder, admiring the yellows of his hair, the soft pink of his skin and the brightness and purity of that smile. The official threatened him to stay quiet, asking him what the problem was, to which he responded “I am just a madman.” Thomas looked behind his back to the setting sun as the official squeezed his arm and pushed him forward, then looked at James, asking if he saw it too, whist making no effort to hide how amazed he was. The captain nodded, forcing his face to remain expressionless even if his soul was dancing to see him so happy. It would be suspicious if that official saw him as nervous on the outside as he was on the inside.  
“You are Mr. Mather?” The official eyed him from head to toe, distrustful of the size of his clothes, of the uneasiness of his manners.  
But he felt himself being looked, and he had to fight the urge not to push the official, to hold that man as tight as he could and hiss that pretentious sailor away.  
“Second time they ask me that today, second time I answer yes.” James took the insignia from his pocket and handed it to the man, feeling half of his face burn as Thomas stared at him, laughing and shaking his head in complete disbelief of what James could do. James, who couldn’t rely on the excuse of madness, let his face burn as he waited as patiently as he could for the officer to check his insignia.  
He discretely looked beyond the man, to the sunset Thomas was so shocked by, and appreciating that beauty made the wait a little less painful.  
James created the courage to look at Thomas, as if that would expose them and make the official take him away.  
But that didn’t happen.  
They could just smile.  
“Everything is in order.” the officer let go of Thomas’ arm, “Behave.” and left with that as his last order.  
Since Thomas was standing back to the ship, he knew he could smile, so he opened one so large his eyes were almost closed. James felt his heart melt, and he used all his strength to say, “Look behind you. It’s beautiful.”  
The sunset was beautiful, but the colours painting Thomas’s face was splendid, and the sight left James breathless.  
“Shall we leave this hellhole?” he heard Thomas ask, but he was far, too far for James to hear him. He kept staring at Thomas’s face, remembering and trying to imprint that memory on his retinas so he would never forget again. “James!” He laughed and showed his tied hands. “You helpless, man loving, man. We have better places to be!”  
“By all means.” James gestured with his hand . “Lead the way.”  
It took a while for James to realize that Thomas was still a prisoner he should escort, so when he did, he held Thomas by the ropes that tied his wrists, and pulled him lightly to get him walking. The texture of his hands were foreign, so was the feeling of friendly skin. James felt his face flush when Thomas defiantly held his fingers and didn’t let go. They didn’t walk far until they reached the storehouse. James had tied the real Mr. Mather on the corner of that building, because he judged that to be concealed enough, so the inside was even more sheltered. He pulled Thomas through a shabby door, both so close that when James turned to look at him, Thomas had to bend minimally forward to kiss him, his hands holding James’s face with delicacy.  
Lips felt strange, they were both accustomed to teeth.  
Thomas smiled in James’s kiss when his lover brought his hands up to hold his face. Still, he was uncomfortable, and his movements restricted. James, noticing his difficulty, took the knife out of his belt to cut the ropes, but he couldn’t stop. It had been just too much time, and his kiss was just too sweet. It tasted like red.  
“Look. Go ahead, I’m not going anywhere.” Thomas took a step back and gave him his hands. While James held him as if he were porcelain, he looked at his hair, that soft ginger, at the freckles and the flush on his cheeks and on his lips. Then he looked up at the golden light beams, shooting through the wooden roof that illuminated James’s face and made their world oh so warm.  
Even with his hands free, Thomas kept staring at him, noticing every single shade of colour that flushed James’s face.  
“You are a work of art,” he breathed, barely opening his mouth.  
James laughed. Stupid. Stupid people blushed. He looked away. He was pale enough for that to be noticeable. Too noticeable.  
“Don’t you dare!” Thomas brought his face back up, closer to him, and shook his head in complete disbelief. “I say you are beautiful and you turn away. Let me look!”  
Love drunk people blushed.  
He could allow himself to blush, just in that full storehouse.  
James felt his eyes tear. He had been smiling for too long and his cheeks were tired, but he already held onto ropes with bleeding hands. That was more than pleasant.  
“How are you?”  
Thomas let go of him and laughed a loud laugh.  
“Oh my God, James, I don’t know? Sick, maybe? I spent three god damned years in Bethlem. You take your own conclusions. Terribly sad, if you couldn’t see, I’m on the verge of tears. And I also feel…” Thomas took a few steps back and gestured on the air as if tasting expensive wine. “Irreparably, incurably and unashamedly homosexual,” accentuating every pause, “and in love with a man who can’t even look at me.” He looked around as a farmer looks at their crops. “I am sincerely considering telling England to fuck off, because this cock of mine is not hers to suck any more.”  
It was James’s turn to shake his head and smile in disbelief.  
“I take great offence at you saying I can’t look at you.” He walked towards Thomas and pulled his hips closer, aggressively staring. His eyes were blue, as if that love drunk captain had ever forgotten, and he was smiling to James, laughing at his own jokes, at his lover’s shyness, at the absurdity of waking up with no hope only to see James waiting for him at the harbour, doing his best not to smile like a little child. “Is that enough?”  
“We will have to make up for lost time.” Thomas threw his arms over James’s shoulders, lazily playing with a coil of his hair and gazing back at him with his eyes half closed and his smile more serene. “Three years of lost time.”  
“I plan on living until I’m old and grey,” James said, his lips brushing against Thomas’s as he spoke. “Given my occupation, I’d say I am delusional.”  
“I know. It’s hard for us, helpless madmen.” James felt him smiling and nudged their foreheads together. Their entire bodies were touching, their chests, their bellies, their legs. “And we are the lucky ones. Do you think that darling Tadd found us suspicious?”  
“None of my business, I couldn’t care less.” He allowed his head to fall to the side of Thomas’s chin, his mouth touching the exposed skin along the edge of Thomas’s collar. “I care that you are here, talking like an idiot.”  
The words were more felt than heard .  
“At least I’m not the idiot who asked the happiest man alive how he is,” he laughed, shifting his shoulders to give James more space. James’s beard tickled his neck, but the softness of his kisses were too calming for that to bother him. The hands on his hips were also comforting, just like the locks between his fingers, and the salty smell that emanated from his hair. Thomas let some of his weight fall on James’s shoulders and closed his eyes as he buried his face in his waves.  
James held that weight while pulling his shirt from his pants. He spent weeks trying to remember how he sounded like, but he never forgot how much Thomas loved it when James ran his fingertips over his back as he was being pulled closer. When Thomas exhaled against James’s hair, he felt like the most knowledgeable human in the world.  
“I feel like an idiot,” Thomas admitted while James went from kissing his neck to his chest, his hands holding Thomas tight against his body.“Sneaking into a storehouse to fuck.”  
When James looked up at him, he brought his hands from Thomas’s hips to his shoulders, running his finger lightly under his clothes.  
“You do?” He asked defiantly. Thomas had to bite his own lips when he looked down at James’s, red, shiny, inviting. James noticed, and he let one hand fall from inside his shirt to stroke his partner’s lips. “Then help me think of a more peaceful place in Charles Town. I can wait, I am also not going anywhere.”  
“I am preoccupied.” Thomas couldn’t smile any more. He could feel his own face getting hotter, his breathing heavier, and he allowed himself to get lost in the comfort of James’s touch. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth, welcoming James to stroke his lips, and because he had his eyes shut, James’s needy kiss was a more than pleasant surprise. Thomas felt the heat making its way down his body when James provokingly bit his lips, when he felt James’s fingers slide underneath his breeches to grab his ass tightly, and especially when he stopped kissing his mouth, falling to his neck, to his collarbone, while his steady hands started undressing him.  
“James, you horny bastard,” Thomas said when his sense of humour came back, shaking his head as if in total disbelief.  
With Thomas’s help, James brought those pesky pants down, giving him the best sight of his hard cock.  
“I just wanted to make you feel welcome,” he smirked, kneeling to kiss the inside of his thighs. He felt Thomas giggle with his stupidity. “You are happy you are free from England, does that mean you are mine now?”  
Thomas crouched and held James’s face, making the captain look at his eyes and admiring how pink his cheeks were, how bright his lips shined.  
“I never ceased being, but, darling,” he laughed, “I would hate it if you were to blow me with me standing, I can’t have a view as marvellous as I would want.”  
“And you call me a horny bastard?” James pushed him away and got up to look around the storehouse. He felt nostalgia take over his smile. That was not the first they would fuck in a harbour, and he had some found memories of that. “You have no self awareness.”  
He pointed Thomas to an abandoned wooden bench and watched as the man threw his pants over it to sit on them, splaying his legs open in an unbelievably obscene invitation that James felt going right to his cock. James kissed his lips, needy and careless as he opened one of his hands over Thomas’ belly, squeezing his thigh with the other. James would have spent more time teasing and playing with him if he hadn’t missed Thomas’s taste like one misses the comfort from home, so he lowered himself and held his cock, looking briefly up at Thomas’s face, just to remember his careless expression. Half-open mouth, flushed cheeks, messy hair. He licked his cock lazily with the flat of his tongue before taking him whole. Thomas let out a drawn out moan and curled forward to hold James’s head against his body. It was only with James holding him, kissing him, blowing him, that he realised how much he missed being touched.  
The doctors repeated so many times that there was no true pleasure he could have from flesh that he almost believed it. Every time those urges grew inside him, because even in places like Bethlem his body would still do that to him, he had to pray for nobody to notice, for nobody to read him like they read him and James in their own home. After going through that hell, to let pleasure wash over him felt like... living. Thomas felt his eyes tearing with the memories.  
He didn’t dry his face.  
James alternated between sucking and licking Thomas’s cock and he sensed, more than heard, Thomas’s soft cries getting louder in his hair. Those were beautiful sounds, he thought, and he was the cause for them. There would never be a greater honour. James pictured Thomas’s body, his legs, holding his head tight, his arms, involving his whole being and his fingers, lost on James’s hair and guiding his movements, his thrusting hips and his angelic face.  
As he was getting closer and closer to finishing, Thomas allowed his moans to become clearer and more unashamed. James had always enjoyed the pleasure he could bring his lover, so he brought himself back from his fantasies and from the absolute delight it was having Thomas’s cock in his mouth to fully appreciate feeling him come.  
And what a sight it was.  
His hair was messy, his skin covered in sweat and his blue eyes absolutely passionate as he returned his look.  
“I see you are not out of shape,” Thomas joked after kissing the ecstasy out of his lips.  
“Did you expect anything less?” He said between kisses as he made himself comfortable on Thomas’s lap. James held his face and kissed him, not giving any opening for the man to speak.  
“From the feared Captain Flint? No, not really.” Thomas brought him closer in a way James’s groin would rub against his torso . That won him a concealed moan from his lover. “Have you also set your hopes high, captain?” James lost his breath. Thomas calling him captain made him even more aroused and he could see that Thomas noticed it. That grin was so irritating and... hot? “I will do my best to fulfil them, but I am just a humble man.” he said as he reached beneath James’s pants and started stroking him. “I am sure you understand.” James tried to stay contained, but the feared captain soon succumbed to the need of hiding his face in his lover’s shoulders. This lover played with his hair as James breathed hard in his ear. This lover played with his cock, pulling sighs of pleasure from him. And this lover wasn’t just any lover, he was Thomas Hamilton, of all people on that round earth, and James had him back.  
When that realization struck hard, James held him closer, nipping at Thomas’s ear, sucking his neck and scratching those perfect shoulders of his. He had him back and Thomas was made of flesh and bone.  
He didn’t care when he came on those expensive stolen clothes, to have them was already more than he started with.  
“You haven’t changed a thing,” Thomas whispered to him. “You moan just the same.”  
James smiled. His body felt warm, Thomas’s hold was safe.  
No. He would never leave that place.  
“What else do you recall?” he asked lazily, accommodating his face on Thomas’s shoulders.  
“I recall...” He remembered plentiful meals, steamy nights and intimate mornings. But then came the mornings that rose too early, when he woke alone to the screams of other interns, knowing he would soon be next. The first time he spoke against one of those men was still vivid in his memory. Thomas sighed. Not all memories were pleasant. “Late night talks.” With his hands he brought James’ face before his, asking him to pay attention. “When you would tell me you were afraid of what you couldn’t see. We both knew you could manoeuvre around the predictable, even around facts you just learned a second prior, but it is impossible to strive confidently in the dark.”  
James shook his head and was about to get up when Thomas held him by the hips.“Why are you bringing this up?”  
“You are fleeing,” Thomas said in the most welcoming and warm way he could. “Nobody wants to walk in a dark room, I don’t blame you for that, but if you tell me where you are”  
“I am here in the most concealed dock of Charles Town’s harbour.” James made his best to smile softly.  
“Are you scared of me?”  
James held his breath, but then allowed his body to relax in Thomas’s arms.  
“Darling,” Thomas called, stroking his back and gazing at him. “Why?”  
“Are you truly fine?” James asked when courage grew strong enough in him.  
“I am.”  
“Truly?”  
“Truly.”  
He wanted to trust Thomas, and he knew he should, but he was still walking in a dark room. If he didn’t know everything, he would be unable to help, he would stumble and break what was important to him, he would hurt him, he would step on the wounds he was supposed to help heal.  
“James” being called helped. He was back. “Truly.”  
“What did they do to you?” he forced himself to ask. He needed to know. He knew he was still going to stumble, even with the most honest answer, but to wait until he made a false step to fall into an abyss would make fear rot him from inside out.  
Thomas opened his mouth, then closed it again. So much, too much. He thought for a moment of the best way to explain three years of abuse into one simple answer, and he soon found himself lost. Where to start? When to start? In which order? With which filters? James took some distance to look at him, to find why he was quiet, and to see his teary eyes, his mouth open, but wordless.  
“I am sorry.” James said and pulled Thomas closer to his chest, hugging him tight “But yes, I am scared. I am absolutely terrified.”  
James’s chest was strong, he thought. Had it always been that way?  
“That’s” Thomas didn’t finish, he felt his voice break. “I am too.”  
James kissed Thomas’s hair,  
“James, get up, my legs are going numb.”  
“I am sorry.”  
“Get dressed.” Thomas nuzzled him aside when a great idea, an all-encompassing idea, came to mind. “I have something really important to do.” James fixed his clothes and sighed, but he watched as Thomas got hastily dressed and made his way through the exit, knowing he had to follow him. “You told me you became a pirate, I read that, so I can say for sure those clothes are not yours. Where are them?”  
He never failed to surprise.  
“Near the real Mr. Mather, I tied him to a log near”  
“Right here!” Thomas said as he found the man. “You didn’t even bother hiding him! You drugged him out of him mind... poor man.” he lamented as he took his own clothes off to put on James’s old torn garments.  
“Will you tell me what that something so important is?”  
“Oh yes, just let me...” he asked for James’ shoulder to take off his shoes, but the captain almost let him fall when he was about to step with his white cotton sock on the filthy ground of the harbour.  
“Don’t do that to my socks.” those old cotton socks he sewed together so many times. “Put on the damn boots.”  
Thomas giggled as he tied the laces and, even if the clothes were a bit too tiny, he kept true to his quest of marching to the dock, laughing to James as he caught up.  
“The really very important thing I need to do is this...” he cleared his throat and took a second to control his smile, knowing that it would be impossible, then filled his lungs as much as he could before screaming to the deep blue of the night sky. “Fuck off, England! I am in the Americas!” Thomas stood serious for a moment before breaking into laughter, knowing fully well there was nobody near to listen.  
“Darling!” James pulled him down by his shoulders, laughing until he was too weak to do anything.  
So he brought him back to the inn where Miranda hugged him tightly, where he took her off the ground and kissed her, telling her how James stood like a true marine when talking to the official, mocking the way he spoke. She asked how he was, and James had to laugh with that recent gem.  
Thomas’s answer to her was just as precious.  
“I am free and ready to commit a handful of crimes.”

7.  
The sail back to Nassau wasn’t as terrible as the one to Charles Town. They talked first about the good: the ship, the crew, the prosperity. Then about the bad, the violence the three of them had to endure, the treason, the loneliness. And at least, the ugly, the murders, the plunders, the distancing from soul, humanity and past they had to take, because otherwise all the rest would be too much. They discussed and helped with the parts none of them wanted to acknowledge, and the intimacy felt... like a heavy woollen blanket, that would always be there as shelter from the dangers of the dark. James surprised himself; he stayed, he gently touched Thomas’s hand when his voice cracked, he reassured him when he could and when his lover’s accounts became too heavy to bear, Miranda was there to hold the burden with them. He didn’t flee; he was brave.  
Brave because he wasn’t alone.  
At least, Miranda thought, James wasn’t staring out of windows, running from his blindness.  
After arriving in Nassau and waiting for Gates to return with the plunder, Thomas took a second to accept that the ship they were pointing to at the harbour was theirs, and now, also his.  
“This absolute unity?” he asked again in disbelief. “You are asking me to come together in this absolute unity of a square rigger?”  
“Would you rather find another?” Miranda had to tease him. The opportunity was just too good not to take. “They aren’t cheap and we only have that and a lot of debt under our names. But feel”  
“No, of course!” He said before she could finish. His enthusiasm made James and Miranda smile. Was that paradise? “I mean, the only useful thing I know how to do in a ship is always look pretty, but if I am welcome”  
“And you are.”  
“I think I learn some new skills, work on some networking.”  
“You are a politician, you speak well, I’m sure you will save us from some turmoil.”  
They fit yet another bed in the captain’s quarters. The room was getting fuller by the day. They had to have colourful things, and Miranda was joyful to now share her finds with people who could see them. Pretty books, a bottle of shells and one lonely pocket watch the men gifted her, because it would be a waste not to bring in the all colour they could now see and fill every corner of their lives to the brim with it.  
James wrote him first, because he knew he could not expect Thomas to, not after learning what it was he used to write with. A random passage from Dante, just for the fun of picturing a world so well divided. Thomas would never admit it, but James saw his reaction when he noticed. He covered his mouth, first to hold a smile, but then to keep himself from tearing. Even if James had written that while it would not be a problem for them to embrace and cry and laugh, they were in the middle of a meeting, and they had to stay composed.  
Weeks later, Thomas stayed up to study. James found it absolutely inspiring how he could predict prices, how he could plan their spendings and how talented he was with investments, so he knew better than to bother. What the captain didn’t know was that Thomas was soon done with his work, and that he spent hours updating his readings, and then, even more hours with his quill in hand, preparing. He only came back to sleep with James just before sunrise. When day broke, he woke up to James hugging him from the back. That was his fancy handwriting, his poetic sentences. Thomas turned to hold him back, and he knew James was holding back tears.  
With time, the writings became routine, “I learned about a new prize, meet me asap!”; “I can’t stand this music. Who allowed this person to ever touch a violin?”  
And their personal favourite.  
“Come to bed. It’s late.”  
Because they could now call.

8.  
Calm years went past, and, even if the finances weren’t now as good as they once were, life was still running as smoothly as it could for them, pirates. That was until James put both of them, Miranda and Thomas, into the quarters, locked the door behind him and opened an excited and greedy smirk.  
He waited for a moment before starting.  
“Do you want to learn the story of a Spaniard named Vasquez?”


End file.
